The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - Hour 1: Targeting Bud Crawford (feat. Nico Casares)

Episode Date: March 26, 2026

"But..." Dan starts our hour with Tony's friend and Team USA Flag Football QB, Nico Casares, by bringing up the Puka Nacua controversy, so... good spot for him. But once Tony explains what Juego De Manos means, Nico details what it was like to take down the greatest players in the NFL on a national stage. He also has hot takes. But don't worry, folks, we get back to Puka stuff once he heads out. Normal hour. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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This is the Dan Levitart show with the Stugats podcast. This episode of the Dan Lebitzard show is presented by Draft Kings. Draft Kings, the crown is yours. I'm going to bring the energy for this. Bomb. Baseball. Bomb, bomb, bomb. Baseball.

This is a good show you're doing. This is the pitch clock. I decided to watch pitch clock. Pitch clock is coming at you. It's incredible. Hi, everybody. Baseball. Pitch clock is coming at you.

On the pitch clock. Baseball. Pitch clock is coming at you. Can I tell you something? Baseball. This is the pitch clock. Hey, baseball, coming at you now. Hi, everybody.

Pitch clock will be featured in the next hour. We have a United States. State Senator joining us in the next hour. We have Tony's friend joining us this hour. Jeremy, you're doing a live show pitch clock at 3 o'clock with a good get. Chris Cody, you were able to get, you were able to secure Chris, Chris Cody as a guest. What are you guys trying to do today at 3 o'clock? Also, Ethan. So we're going to be watching basically every game that's happening opening day. That was opening night last night. This is opening day. This is what baseball is about. The good stuff.

It starts at 1 o'clock. So we'll be getting the back end of the first game today. And then a whole bunch of games started two, three, and four. So we'll be watching all the games updating people there. But we will also be playing a couple of our pitch clock style trivia games. And we're just going to have a segment called guys naming dudes, where we'll be talking about players from the 90s. Or dudes naming guys. Could be either.

Okay. However you prefer. Guys naming dudes, dudes naming guys. But we're going to be talking about old school names and make you happy like Ronnie Belliard. Also, at 1.30 p.m. the episode of the pitch clock from today that previews everything happening in the season with Adnan Verk, that'll be live at 1.30 on our YouTube page

on that YouTube playlist, where Adnan will tell you that Logan Webb, who got lit up last night, is going to win the Cy Young in the National League. All right, great work by Adnan Verk allowed seven runs last night, and that information long season. I immediately stopped what I was doing when I heard Ronnie Belliard. See?

I'd go earlier than that to Raphael Belliard, because I'm just older than you guys. You're trying to out belly yard to him? I was. It's a belly art off, and I believe I've got the bigger belly. Bigger belly. Hit that one out of the bell yard. Can you guys let me finish my jokes before making you?

It was so obvious. He was trying to land a joke, Jeremy. Jeremy's unfunny in that chair, too. Marlins. If you want more of Jeremy's comedy styling. I'll actually be the in-stadium host at Lone Depot Park this week. Starting opening day, I'll be the instigium host. So Tony's friend is here with us.

today. Oh my God, you guys. Tony's friend is here with us to celebrate flag football, but before we do that, I just, I want to get to something a little bit more serious because Pukonakuwa is putting the league in a very difficult spot because he's about to make more money than any of the wide receivers. and he most resembles everything that has happened with Antonio Brown toward the end of his career. The details of this kind of meltdown ran Antonio Brown out of the league after he got a number of different chances. And I want to go through some of what is happening with Puka Nakua because he's now being accused of anti-Semitism for the second time.

He's also not even denying. even just an accusation or an allegation. He's not denying that he bit a woman. His lawyer is not denying that he bit a woman. Now, I want to show his lawyer for a second so that you guys can see who Levi is, who is representing Puka Nakua as he gets in the game here of trying to correct some of the optics around what surrounds the second best receiver in football. That's Levi McArthuran and he looks the part there. What are you shaking your head about that? That's not L.

Levi, whatever. That's Champ Kine with a couple extra LBs. Whammy! Whammy! You're trying to have a thought-provoking segment here on Puka Nakua. You can't come out the gates with that photo. I just... Now I'm lost.

That is the lawyer. That is the lawyer for Puka Nakuwa. And I don't know what to do with everything surrounding Puka Nakua, because basically all I know about this person as a human being right now is he's exceptional at football. He plays a physical kind of football that makes me wonder if his head's right, given all of the details around his story. Yeah, and he's had some controversial opinions about CTE as well. I don't know if it's because his star continues to ascend and he's, you know, one of the bigger sports stars in that market. and in the league. He's highly productive. But his offseason has to be concerning for the L.A. Rams.

I don't think it's unfair to say. All of this behavior is super concerning and strange. Because it's not just the biting accusations, the anti-Semitism. I guess it's Manosphere adjacent to because he did that Aidan Ross stream that started a lot of issues for him. It's his quotes. But there's also a lot of videos of him partying and maybe partying a little too hard. videos of him passed out, which certainly just that alone would be concerning for the LA Rams. He seems to get after it, and his family's had issues too. He's had siblings, like steal a car. He's had another sibling assault a fan at a U.F.L. game while he was in uniform. So this would be very concerning if I were less than Sean McVeigh and the L.A. Rams.

Like, this is not good, and this could be the sign of things to come. And I don't think you're out of line, even though there was. was actual like felonious behavior as we crescendoed. This is early stage Antonio Brown type of behavior that we were all kind of laughing at with the Raiders and then it got out of hand quickly and I worry for Puka. Early stage Antonio Brown behavior is about as large an indictment I can make of a athlete in that sport. And Antonio Brown represents for me something that I simply had not seen before or experience

in my entire lifetime covering sports, which is. you've got a guy who's got a pristine reputation rebounding from homelessness in Miami to becoming a professional pillar who appears to get addicted during the social media age to social media and all of a sudden the access we have to him is too much access and we see someone go full-blown crazy on us

and we don't know enough about CTE to understand is that happening because of the hit he took from Vantes Burrfect? The style of play that Puka plays combined with all the other elements here, make it so this is not a star on the faded end of his career like Antonio Brown was, who's still got several chances, and won a championship as some of this stuff started. This is a guy who's going to vie for the biggest contract in the league next year

if he can keep his behavior correct, but the attorney and him are not even denying the biting allegation. No, there's a damning photo out there too. The lawyer is saying it was just horseplay, but the photo is a bite mark on a human being that is, that, that looks like it's aggressive. That's why my dad always told me, no Juego de Mano. That was a very important piece of my childhood is no Jue de Mano, don't do that. You know, it always ends up bad.

And it does. But this isn't Juego de Mano, this is Jue de Jente. I know, but it's still all in the same category. Hueo de Mano, you could do it with Tiki. He doesn't have fill in the rest of the audience. Huel de Mano literally translated into hand games, but it's also roughhousing, that kind of play. Let's play. I guess we got to do Refrand del D.

We're there already. Now, I wanted to do serious, thoughtful segment, but we're now at Huevo de Mano. You didn't expect that. I know. I'm sorry. We're playing the music after we do the thing again. Yeah, we're doing it. We're going to do it again.

We're going to revolutionize the industry is what we're going to do by playing the imaging to things after we've already done them. This is good music for Tony's friend, too, to just welcome him in. He can help us. Deveritomegente. All right. Refand dea, we don't need to spin the wheel. We know what it is. Juego de Mano.

Every Latin kid who is ever born knows Juego de Mano because it is generational because it transcends every family. Everybody knows you do not play Juego de Mano if you have a sibling, if you have a cousin, if you have anybody that is your same age, you get into horseplay,

you get into roughhousing, you get into things that you shouldn't because you start playing around but it never ends up that way. Hueo de Mano always ends up serious. Starts as a joke, ends very serious, ends with everybody going to timeout, everybody getting the belt at one point or no. It's the truth. You want me to be honest? That's the truth.

That is the truth. Tony tells the truth. Who is your friend, Tony? Oh, Dan, glad you mentioned them. We're going to bring them back over. Nico Casaris, QB for the USA flag football team. USA! Nico, you can turn on your mic right there, buddy. How does it feel? That was the worst USA chant we've ever had. We need to be better about being USA first here, if you want me to be honest.

But that's not the point. The point is, buddy, how does it feel? Fanatics champion. It was incredible, first of all. There we go. It was incredible, first of all. To showcase what we could showcase on national television on Fox was amazing. And then shout of fanatics because leading up to the event, to the actual game, it was incredible. All the events they had planned out throughout the week, all the guys they had showed that we're contemporaries in that space.

So it was pretty amazing. They showed respect? Yeah, 100%. Now, did that respect start before the festivities or after you started kicking their? So before the festivities, but funny enough on Wednesday, after the draft party, we went upstairs to the little like rooftop they had there, whatnot. And Sequin Barclay, cool, cool dude showed Mad Love the whole time was like talking like, oh, how are you guys going to pull my flag, blah, blah, blah, and we were like, well, you can't jump, you can't hurdle, there's no contact. Were you teaching him the rules as did he know that already or you're like, nah, everything you do in the NFL you can't do? They knew it to some degree, but they didn't know about like the no jumping, that type of stuff.

So they found out. Well, take us through, though, what your expectations were versus what ended up happening. For those of you who do not know, incidentally, the pros, Joe Burrow, Tom Brady, Stefan Diggs, Rob Grunkowski. I believe, I'm guessing that they thought they were going to win. I believe that most of the people watching thought they were going to win without understanding that flag football is totally different from professional football. it's quickness, you don't need strength for anything. It's just, you have to be super quick, super precise. How did it go compared to how you thought it was going to go?

I always knew, and I could say as a team, we always knew we were going to win the game, I would say. We felt confident. I mean, we do this all the time, so it's a difference there. They're picking this up on a week. Some might have been training for it, but for the most part, they're training for the NFL. That's what their job is, right? So we always knew we had confidence that we were going to win. I just thought personally that we're going to get more scoring from them because of who they are, per se.

But you could tell how much the rush affected stuff, that they're only seven yards away. They didn't have a blocker. So that affected things. And then the nuances of the game affected it also. So it was easier than even you thought. You knew you were going to win. You did not know you were going to blow them out. Correct.

And so it was easier than you thought. Like there wasn't nerves or anything. You guys were convinced, yeah, they're not going to be able to do the things we do. we've trained for years for what we're doing. They haven't trained for any of this, and it's a different sport. Correct, and I think that was on full display. But say it was easy. They're still NFL players, so I'm going to give them their respect.

He's kind of doing that. One thing that really jumped out in watching it is guys like Sequin in the NFL, they look super explosive, but power is such a huge part of their game, and power is not really needed all that much in this sport. Like, the better athletes on television were on Team USA because they were just so much quicker. That was crazy, but it's not just that. It's not just, okay, I got a guy that knows how to play on this smaller field and with these rules.

Like, Devante Adams, all time is like one of the greatest goal line target guys ever. And your DBSs are blanketing him. Probably a top 10 receiver. Yeah. So, like, you guys know the angles. You know how to manipulate the playing surface. And there was one moment during the broadcast where you were essentially explaining the game to gronk. And he was really receptive.

But in my mind, in all of sports, I can't imagine a more difficult person to explain rules to anything. when it comes to rules of any kind than Grong. So how did that go? Actually, it was a complete opposite. I mean, he was just asking a bunch of questions, like, when do you know, like, what it's on the broadcast? Like, when do you know when to go in and stuff like that? And I had to relate it.

I played tackle football. I played in college at a small D3 in D.C. But I had to relate it in that way. It was like, oh, when do you know when it go in? I'm like, oh, it's like a package. It's like, you know if it's two tight ends here in the game. If there's one tight end, you know you're in the game. So it's similar in that regard.

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That's betterh-E-L-P dot com slash D-L-B. Don Lebertard. To us, residents. Oh, wow. That's pretty good. I think I haven't been practicing? Stugats. I didn't realize we had a substitute complicated legacy.

Brought you by headquarters Toyota. 4-41, Power. Roll and rude. Second out of nine. This is the Dan Levitar show with the Stugats. It was the founder. Brady checks into the game. He immediately evades pressure,

sidesteps and finds Gronk in the corner of the end zone. And then Gronk then ends up like pulling his hammie. But right then in that moment, you're like, oh shit. All right, that's Brady to Gronk. Like, all right, maybe these guys can hang. Yeah, 100%. Like, Gronk was a massive. You guys didn't have an answer for Grom.

Grunk is a massive human being to get around playing any sort of football. And I think it showed in flag football. And he loved it. Like he was asking, like I said, a bunch of questions hung out, talked with us all week. So he was into it. And he was, like, upset that is hammy wet. Who was talking the most smack on the other teams? It had to be Logan Paul.

Logan Paul was up there. But honestly, Logan Paul at the same time was like he rushed one play. He rushed at me. And I threw that double pass back to Hoosh. And he was like, did it? I do my job there? And I'm like, yeah, you did. Don't worry about it.

They ran Logan the entire game. I was so impressed with his athleticism because he was drenched in sweat. They were just sending him full sprint the entire game. That's what rushers are, man. I mean, credit to them, it's something in flag football that gets overlooked that rushers, but how important they are and it showed. We have a really good one in Sean Thread Flash, who's the same guy who ran the route on Luke Keeklee.

And, I mean, it showed how much of a difference maker he is in the game. Were Luke Keekely? Were any of the pros particularly? angry at the way you guys were beating them? Not really. I think if it was during the game, to be honest with you, it was all in the makeup of like making the game, like bringing attention to it, to be honest with you. But none of them were I think were truly angry about it. I think the more it realized how different the game was when we actually got into the game.

There were cool moments in the broadcast where you can tell like, oh, like these guys realize this is tougher than we anticipated. Like Hopkins catches that touchdown. You kind of see the competitive spirit there. but then how much fun did you guys have breaking their will? Because there were points where they capitulated too. And Jalen Ramsey wasn't talking as much towards the end. Jailor actually, so the second play of the game, I threw a post to one of the guys going by Ravel.

And DeAndre Hopkins, Devonty Adams were like, do you know that's Jailin Ramsey? Like, what are you doing? And I'm like, I'm not going to, like, you can't be scared of them because that's how you lose the game. So it was just about playing our game and trusting our process. have a bunch of great coaches, and it just worked out that way. All Cubans, right? Yeah, all Cubans. Three for three on Cubans.

I've never heard a coach on a Fox broadcast say, Oia, to get his way of the attachments. As soon as I heard that, it was DiCaprio meme. I'm like, that guy's from Miami. That guy's got to be from Miami. We have a couple of plays, Linia, Cajita. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was going to ask if you were speaking in Spanish because they wouldn't understand you. You don't even have to, like, cover your mouth with a play sheet because you could just,

Yeah, George is our head coach. He's been doing it. He's probably the greatest, like in a different format of all time, quarterback-wise. So he knows a lot, and it's easy to communicate with him, especially against maybe not so much the South American countries, but against your Japan, your Germany's and Spanish. Are you, are the gold medal favorite? Yes, sir. Who's the silver, like, who's the big challenge? So it's usually Mexico always gives us a hard game.

We just played them a month ago. We won by a point. Yep. Mexico is very good because they play it like us. They play it year long and they do it all the time. Panama is very good and I would say Japan and Italy would be the next ones after. How many countries would have also won what you guys did? I think all of the other countries would also give them a game just because of the nuances. I just don't know about how much I think we're the physically most imposing country that could compare. So I think that's why we would have the edge over all the rest of the country.

So I'd be interested to see how that goes. Who were the NFL players who most underestimated you where you could just tell. Well, Hush, for example, changed his entire tone before the game. Felt disrespectful, felt that people didn't understand, was quoted as saying, I'm better than Mahomes. And then didn't quite walk all that back, but was so moved by how gracious the NFL guys were throughout, that everything he said since then wasn't the victory lap I was expecting him to take because those guys offered you the respect on the front end.

but who underestimated you guys? I don't want to say it was an underestimate, like everybody underestimated us as a whole. Because I think like for the general like population, like you think like really think about it. It's flag guys who some work full-time jobs, right? Compared to the best in the world, athletes. So it's easy to go that round,

underestimate us. But I think the more they realize going into Saturday what they got themselves into, They realized it was that much more of a different game. So the disrespectful stuff when this came out about it being in the Olympics and NFL players waiting in the water saying that they would like to be a part of it, you guys, I know Hoosh was vocal, taking an exception to it. Like, guys, this is a totally different game.

Just because you've done this in the league doesn't mean that you can come take our job. But who out of those two teams do you think NFL guys that can actually give it a go? go for the Olympic team? I would say the hard part is the fact that their OTA season and whatnot coincide with... Right, but O'Dell had an incredible catch, and he's out of...

There's no doubting receiver's talent. No one's going to sit here and say Justin Jefferson and O'Dell Beckham can't play at the same time. But at the end of day, if you look at it, like, how much are they really going to commit their bodies to it? Because as you see like Hoosh and Velt and Pablo, the three guys running around,

they're 5-8, 140. maybe, but they fly. So it's just a complete different place down on a completely different body type. I was going to say it's Gronk and Logan Paul. Strangely enough. Logan Paul, the rush are like, you just let him go. I think Gronk would be very good at flag football, by the way.

Who's the defensive guy that as you were playing, you're like, oh, I can key in on this guy and like he can't stop me. Because he sucks. Was it the boxer? Terrence Crawford, maybe? Bud Crawford. There will be that. We're going to talk shit about Bud Crawford.

On the broadcast, they're like they seem to be targeting Terrence Crawford. He's the only non-football player out of here. So I won't sit here in disrespect, arguably a Mount Rushmore boxer of all time. But he was leading up to the event. He was talking like, oh, whatever. But that was a guy that every night sat there, talked it up with us. His team talked it up with us. There's no better guy that we met this weekend than Bud.

But he also talked shit and underestimated. you, correct? At first. And was targeted. At first. And then you targeted him. Then you targeted him as a specific weakness. At first. But then, hey, listen to me. If I under the ball a little bit more, it might be a pick. Like that wasn't the best thrown ball I threw all weekend, but hey, Velt ran a great route and it got there. And like I said, great dude, pound for pound boxer. No Bud Crawford disrespect. It's crazy. Even in flag football, the quarterbacks don't want to say anything.

Take us through the specifics of the awe and the XP. when Brady hits Grong. When you realize what you're in the middle of. Mike texted me that he got goosebumps with Brady walking out. When he did the Brady jog. Because you knew that he was watching in the locker. I'm like, oh, shit. These guys are good.

So he's going over with his coaches and he does the trot out there and he's looking intense. And then his very first play, he recaptures the magic with Gronk. I imagine for everybody, even the pro. Goes. Gotta be like, holy shit, he still has it. Like, that's cool. Granted to Gronk one last time. But it's exactly what you're saying. It's unbelievable. It's Brady of Grong. Like, there's no denying that. And the other thing is the fact that gronk moves. Like, I don't want anyone to underestimate that. Gronk could move on that field. That was my main takeaway. It's like, if he doesn't pull his hand me, I'd love to see how that game played out because gronk still is unguarded. And he still has the gifts. Like, he can go. Yeah, it's incredible. And especially in flag football where you can't get a rat, like, you can't play through. his body, you can't play contact.

So getting around Gronk, it was tough. You say flag football, you can't do it. They couldn't do it in the pro. Yeah, exactly. It's the single greatest NFL combination there's ever been. Joe Montana and Jerry Rice have an argument to that. Oh, wow.

He's got takes. This guy's got takes, by the way. Yeah, but I think, like, you guys should seriously consider Gronk because you can't get physical. And in flag football, the body types are totally different. It's all shorter dude. It's like, Bronc is such an advantage.

He just did a great thing. right there because he's got me thinking now. Yeah, Rice is the best receiver ever. Gronk, the best tight end ever. Montana. Mahomes, Mahomes, Kelsey. Yeah, those are the three, but when the reason. No, Clayton, what are we doing?

The reason that I think of... Wait, Dan, Dan, I have a question for you. Round out your top five then. We'll take a little bit of a break. Round out your top five. Take it for a walk, Dan. I'm going to go ahead and put Drew Brees to Michael Thomas on there. Over Jimmy Graham? Fun one. Breeze to Graham was

unstoppable. That too. Let me think for a second here because the thing about gronk right obviously jerry rice and montana is unstoppable for a ton of different reasons but all brady throwing the ball to a spot on gronk when he's six seven is not a guardable play by any human being that's ever existed what is happening to us is it is it a guardable play do you believe if gronk had played the rest of that game do you think it's any different i think it's closer for sure i i i'm not going to sit here and like kid with you i think it's closer. Don't get me wrong. Because you even saw like Jalen Hertz was hitting Grunk at ease also. So I think he makes a difference for sure. But I still think that how about this? When we're

scoring at the rate we score at, if you like you saw the championship game. They tried to slow the game down, try to keep it in their court because if you try going score for score with us, eventually we're just going to outscore you. So I think that's where we would have ended up like breaking a part of Gronk would have played. But I think it's a closer game for sure. Philip Rivers, Antonio Gates. That's a good one. Are there any guys in the NFL that you could see? That guy would be a better flag football.

Did they do a good job of getting the right players for this? Would Kyler Murray be a better flag football quarterback than he's thought of as an NFL quarterback? Lamar Jackson. I think those two are the obvious ones everyone's going to point to after the game. I also think that there's two, like, something I notice is how much ground Jalen Ramsey covers. So I think like singly and certain are two. other ones that could potentially like, okay, I could see them playing in that game next year. Receiver-wise, I think, man, Devante Adams, O'Dell Beckham, like those are the cream of the crop.

Like, yeah, obviously Justin Jefferson and Jamar Chase, but I think already Adams and O'Dell are all-timers right there. With somebody like Amon Ross St. Brown, who's more quick, not as big, but like can be shifting in space. Well, Tyreek Hill, obviously. Tyree Kill, yeah. Nico, thank you for being on with us and congratulations. Thank you, guys.

Can we give him a better USA chance? These guys are going to be stars during the Olympics. You might not know them now, but you're about to know them because they're going to make you proud. We also have a gift for you. We have Nico being able to diagram the play that he threw the post-corner. Okay. Well, let's do it. Can we bring up the Tel-a-Wi-of-Conlusion here?

Let's punctuation. We'll have Nico. We'll use the Telestrator. Did you guys tell him to draw a penis? No, I didn't even lay that trap, but you just did, so he might. Go ahead. Drop-tech, yeah. No, nobody uses the Teletrator correctly.

We haven't used it right once. We have this great device in the modern age and we don't use it correctly. Let's go ahead. Dan, just blame it on Tony. Let's go ahead and do this with Nico. I like this guy. Let's go ahead and show me the play. Hey, I'm here for the hot takes too.

Not about this, but about NBA specifically because Tony thinks concanipo is better than Cooper Flagg. He does. All right, walk us through this. Same is for it. Why, you really cut him off. Did you know that Aaron Judge is older than Anthony Davis for him? Let's go ahead and do this. So pretty much we ran spread and we saw how deep Luke Keekly was here.

You can circle. So Luke Keekley's here. And usually in flag football, when you get a spread concept, you usually get some sort of man-to-man. So we knew that Harrison Smith and Hoosch were locked up. That's it. I'm going to count that. That's a big. One ball.

From the side. One ball. That's a cock and ball. Speed. Logan Paul and the center. were locked up and then with the slot receiver and Luke Keeckley being so far back

we knew we could run a triple move on him so that's what we did. It's called a post corner post and that's exactly, yep, PCP and that's exactly what we ran. No one in the NFL is ever that open. Yeah. There was nobody 15 yards in this. Maybe because Luke Kikli was playing strong safety.

He was like Unda in that game. Kikley was upset. Yeah, yeah. There's probably no, he tried so hard and he is such, like, that is someone that epitomizes, like, great tackle football. No one here is going to say, like, can speak good, like, how good Luke Keekly is. But the wrong body type for flag. Yes, 100%.

He was very clearly frustrated, and he does everything 100%, right? And emotional. You could tell, like, when he just started grabbing the opposing team as opposed to trying to rip at their flags because he was so frustrated that it got to it. So Luke, Luke Keekely is really good friends with our media guys. So they were talking in the week leading up to shout to Ryan Anderson. So they have a great relationship. And even Luke, they did a podcast for the Panthers.

And even Luke was like, yeah, they saw me in the middle of the field. And I knew it was no good after that. The guy's 20 yards ahead of them, of course. Thank you, Nico. Appreciate the time. And congratulations. Thank you, guys. I appreciate you having me.

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Expedited delivery requires a turbo fee. See MoneyLion.com. Sometimes I feel like we're all really good at handling everything around us and just ignoring what's going on in our own head. Like your phone breaks, you fix it immediately. Your car makes a weird noise. You're like, all right, let's figure this one out. But then your brain's off, stress, burnout, not sleeping right?

we just kind of go, yeah, I'll deal with it later. And later just keep moving and moving and moving. And that's why therapy matters, not because something's wrong, because it gives you a way to sort things out before it all stacks up. The problem is that actually getting started has always felt like a process, finding someone figuring out insurance, waiting weeks just to talk to somebody, and that's usually where people tap out. And that's where Rula comes in.

Rula is a healthcare provider group that makes therapy easier to actually access. They connect you with licensed therapists who take your insurance and sessions can be as low as $15. bucks. Your answer a few questions, find someone who fits what you need, and you can be talking to someone as soon as the next day. Thousands of guys have already used Rula to finally get the care that they need. Don't keep putting it off. Go to rula.com slash Dan and get started today. That's Rula rula, rula.com slash Dan. Take the first step, get connected, and take control of your mental health. Hey, Roy, buddy. You know that energy shift when the game gets good, and everybody,

altogether in unison knows to stand up on their feet. Oh, absolutely, Mike. Yeah, you've been at many big time sporting events. You know that moment quite well. That's what it's like when you take your first sip of Cuervo. Oh, delicious. It's the signal that says, we're not checking the time anymore, pal.

It's when small talk turns into stories. Quervo, man, it's at high five a random stranger effect. That's right. The game is popping. You're hugging people you never met before. That's the kind of energy that Cuervo brings. It's so smooth, so delicious. That's the Cuervo effect.

Keep it, Cuervo. Don Lebatard. Stugats. These are smiles. This is the Dan Lebatar show with the Stugats. We're going to have pitch clock for you in the second hour of the show, as well as Senator Mark Kelly. America is under duress, obviously.

we've got a bunch of incompetence in charge of our government, and then at the top of it, you've got a dementia patient who's a felon who is hell-bent on making the United States his seventh bankruptcy. And I'm sure Mark Kelly will be interesting on a number of subjects, including our airports being in almost total disarray inside and outside of the airports, as ice begins to be used at the airport. But they're giving out water. So we will talk to Mark Kelly about that. I just asked Nico on his way out because I didn't mention what his stat line was for the game. It was 23 of 25 for 332 yards, six touchdowns, and no interceptions against a bunch of NFL players. I said, how common is that stat line? He just said, very. Confident guy.

23 of 25 for 332 yards, six touchdowns, no interceptions against the pros. And I guess a cliche doesn't work in flag football. If you have two quarterbacks, you've got two quarterbacks. The connection, Zaz, and he was fast with the correction about the connection because Jerry Rice and Joe Montana will forever be known as the better connection than the one of Grank to Brady. But what Mike was saying about the idea of, have there been humans alive who can stop those two guys doing that many reps over that many years at the precision of what that chemistry is? because Goff has it with St. Brown. Yeah, I'm not saying best pairing ever, even though you can make an argument. I think statistically in terms of touchdowns, that is.

But I'm saying most unstoppable. At the peak of their powers, which quarterback receiver connection? It's not wide receiver. It's just guy catching a pass is the most unstoppable. And I thought they proved it. I mean, remember that incredible game against the Denver Broncos, where everyone on the planet knew where the ball was going. I think, like, the same, Stafford and Cooper Cup had this.

You could do it with Stafford and Puka, too. You can. You can't. Just guys, that doesn't matter how well you play against them, they're getting you. Zazlo, circling back around on a conversation that started Stereus, and then I threw flag football and Latin refrain del Dia music at it. What do you do in the modern age with all the stuff I'm talking about? If indeed, let's not make it about Puka Naku, I also threw in the funny Lord. lawyer with the hat in there just to add yet more levity to a serious conversation. Not my best judgment. In the hypothetical, if I tell you that CTE is going to manifest in a way that leads to a bunch of

bad behavior, what do you imagine it's going to look like if we're comfortable diagnosing TWA on CTE for stuff that happens on the field? What do you do with the only example? we have right now that's a famous one? There are more examples of this, okay? One of the greatest shootings, greatest isn't the right word. One of the most deadly shootings that there have been

in New York City involved somebody standing in front of the NFL building and saying, I'm doing this because of CTE and leaving a note and then was diagnosed with CTE. What do you imagine the bad behavior, the reckless behavior? would look like that we'd feel comfortable diagnosing, hey, is this person a person who's reckless and bad? Or is this a person who plays a style of football that has harmed his head? And

therefore, the behavior seems like real lunacy. Yeah, I think it's, I think it's what you mentioned. I think it's like the guy who also went to the Kansas City Chiefs facility. Remember, I don't remember his name. Jay, Javon Belcher. Yeah. Like, I think, I think it looks like that where I'm comfortable saying, or as comfortable as I'm going to be, blaming CTE, because I'm giving guys the benefit of the doubt that they're not just killers, you know? So if something like that happens where we're talking about murder and suicide, that's where I'm more comfortable saying something must be wrong with their brain. Because what's going on here with Pooka and Akua, I'm a lot more comfortable saying, yeah, you know what? Maybe he's got concussions. Maybe he's got CTE, but also

maybe it's just an asshole. Like, I'm more comfortable with that. There's certainly a maturity issue there, and that could be an issue too. What Zaz is saying, but all these things can be made worse by a dude self-medicating because he's very clearly partying a lot this off season to the point that he's being filmed, partying and being filmed and photographed passed out over there. They're all connected. Look, the sport does a good job of making you accustomed to this stuff. There was a dude that scored a touchdown on one-and-night football for the Dallas Cowboys,

and like two weeks later was dead. Not even that long. We saw him in the end zone, in all his glory, and then there was a police chase, and he was discovered to be dead via suicide. And we just move on. Like there's very clearly, as we all know by now, and as this discourse has become more and more normalized,

that while it feels reckless to talk about Puka Nakua these ways, like that's how it always starts. It always starts. there. And I think that sometimes we just brush off like, oh, it's probably headed for a tragic end, but that'll be years from now. So we don't have to do anything about it now and go out there. I'll draft you on my third round of my fantasy team because you'll be incredible for me. There's humans here. And they're victimizing people too now. So Junior Sayow was supposed to have taught us this a long time ago, right? Because Junior Seow was a

good deal before anything that we're talking about. Zaz is going to the examples of death, which obviously should be the most jarring, but it's not merely death that you have to have in order to get people's attention. You need death and fame. You need both of them to be involved because I just got Belcher's first name wrong. Mike, I'm assuming I don't know the name of the Dallas Cowboy that he's mentioning, but it's not just death. It has to be, we've talked before about the idea of when are people talk about how dangerous this sport is in a way that actually alters the behavior. And we've said it's got to be a player dying on the field to get everyone's attention. And that happened for a few minutes. And then he became comeback player of the year. Well, I also, there's also some

behavior here that I don't want to just let slide because he's clearly going through something right now. It could be just like a real immature patch and a guy that enjoyed me in a superstar or there could be something greater. Like his whole take on CT is concerning. but there's hateful speech here that he kind of got away with the Aden Ross saying we kept moving on, people generally like Pukkah, and then it just pops back up again. Why does that mean he's going through something again? Like people who are hateful and behave really poorly, that doesn't mean they're going through anything. Right.

They can just be bad people. Yeah, no, two things can be true, is what I'm saying. Yeah, that's exactly kind of the feeling here, right? Like, oddly enough, as we talk about this, I'm thinking about Kanye. and like when Kanye went on his anti-Semitic tirades and it was clearly mental health related, but that doesn't mean you let him off the hook for it. And I don't think anybody here is letting Puka off the hook for this behavior. But I think some of the differences that we're talking about when it comes to this specific situation for some of the others is

while there was self-harm and then also harm of the people directly close to a lot of these players we're talking about, whether that ends in something awful like murder suicide or there's domestic abuse that was happening. There's now multiple instances with Puka of being like publicly anti-Semitic and whether it was anti-Semitism, whether it was like we've talked about anti-feminism, whether it was Islamophobia, no matter what it is, when there starts to be this like hate that goes outward, you have to wonder about what is inside that person's heart to begin with that might be sort of unlocked. I want to remind everyone, though, that Antonio Brown's reputation was pristine.

Pristine. It also sounded different. Talk different. I know that everyone now thinks of a certain thing with Antonio Brown because he still has a murder charge on him right now as we speak. Attempted. Attempted murder charge. Excuse me. In all fairness to Antonio Brown.

That is an important. Important. He failed at murder. Go ahead. That's one way to frame it. We all have our cakes. Yeah, I'll Google it some more because, yeah, that one kind of came to. It was outside of a dirty boxing event where shots were fired, but we don't know exactly what happened. Look, I've impeded your thought enough, but it was an important correction.

But I've seen this stuff play out, Dan. I wonder what the union has to say about this stuff, because I feel like if I'm Roger Goodell watching the news cycle with Pukkahua, I pick up a phone and be like, can we check up on this guy? If I'm the Rams, I'm like, can we get our security detail around this guy? Can we protect this guy from himself right now? My point on Antonio Brown is when you go from pristine reputation to how we think about Antonio Brown now, because the social media addiction allowed us to have an insight and access to, I'm going to say crazy that we did not have before.

And now you throw in the other thing that Mike said about self-medicating. The style of football that the Rams play that make it so that you, so that you can somehow replace the very physical Cooper Cup with Pooka and Akua and not really miss a beat, even though Cooper Cup and Matthew Stafford represent one of the greatest combinations you've ever seen. If you watch Higby and their tight ends play, their skill guys have to be so physical that I'm surprised that all of them aren't self-medicating. Like there are times I'm watching the Rams receivers and I'm like, that dude's going to break physical. in half and Puka is the most physical of them. Yeah, it's very rare for physicality to jump off offensively when it's not like a running back.

No, but that's a feature, not a bug. They go looking to draft him in the round they do because they're like, who's going to give us five years of you will waste your body for us? Like Pooka Nakuwa replaced a guy who had more receiving yards in a season than anyone has ever had. Correct? Cooper, or was he second? Cooper Cup had more yards in a season than anyone, and they went to replace him by finding in the lesser rounds, as they're very good at doing, an incredibly physical wide receiver. Yeah, I'm not sure to replace him.

And now I'm curious to see, like, why did Puka, you know, slide so much in that draft? I'm sure they knew some about that stuff. But there might be people that respond to this. I don't know if it gets clipped. That'll be like, you guys are overreacting. Come on, this is nothing like Antonio Brown. we mention Antonio Brown, Antonio Brown now is a cautionary tale. Forever will be. That guy was a bona fide hall of famer, and his last act on a football field was removing his uniform and making

a show of it, and we saw it play out right in front of our eyes on our devices, and the seeds of it are not too dissimilar. And I do think that we, who cover this sport, and who talked about the Antonio Brown thing as it happened, are not being reckless by men. mentioning that because there is something clearly a little off here. Cooper Cup's second all time, by the way, behind Calvin Johnson. I'm doing it purposefully, though, and I'm not trying to be hyperbolic. I'm saying we don't know what any of this stuff looks like. And the cautionary tale we have, if someone who went from a professional pillar to he's crazy. And we saw it happen. We saw it happened on social media. And the reason I'm asking Zaz, what do you think it looks like? It can't be

just suicide in the training facility parking lot like Belcher. Like, yeah, that'll get anybody's attention. The buildup to it. What do you think it looks like? It's reckless behavior. You're drinking too much. You're passing out because your body's in pain. And what's your support system look like? Because your family also has issues that are concerning. I think it looks like puka no juas.

You thought that was a good way to end the second? Comedy stylings, Dano. Oh my God. Terrible. Sports fans, all the sports are coming together. It's a great time. Just sit on your couch. Text your friend. Hey, come over. Let's watch the games. And

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